David Miliband has admitted two US 'extraordinary rendition' flights landed on UK territory in 2002.

The foreign secretary said in both cases US planes refuelled on the UK dependent territory of Diego Garcia.

He said he was "very sorry" to have to say that previous denials made in "good faith" were now having to be corrected.

The renditions - the transport of terror suspects around the world for interrogation - only came to light after a US records search, he said.

BBC world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds said the revelations were "a serious embarrassment for the British government".

Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and former Prime Minister Tony Blair made statements in 2005, 2006 and 2007 saying there was no evidence that rendition flights had stopped on UK territory.

Water boarding

Mr Miliband said the US had told him that neither of the two men involved in the rendition were British, neither left the plane and the US had "assured" him that no US detainees were ever held on Diego Garcia and US records showed no other evidence of renditions through UK territory.

But he said he would compile a list of all flights in UK territory about which concerns had been expressed to send to the US for "specific assurance" they were not used for rendition.

One of the men involved has since been released and one is at Guantanamo Bay.

Mr Miliband said the UK had been told neither of them had been involved in "secret detention centres" nor were subject to water boarding "or other similar forms of interrogation".

He said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shared his "deep regret" about the mistaken assurances.

"Extraordinary rendition" is the term used by US intelligence agencies when they send terror suspects for interrogation by security officials in other countries, where they have no legal protection or rights under American law.

'Widespread concern'

The UK says it expects the US to seek its permission before rendering detainees through UK airspace or territory.

Later Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "It is unfortunate that this was not known and it was unfortunate it happened without us knowing that it had happened but it's important to put in procedures [to ensure] this will not happen again."

He added: "We share the disappointment that everybody has about what's actually happened."

In the Commons, William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said he accepted assurances were made "in good faith" but said: "This information will cause widespread concern given the categoric nature of the assurances previously given.

"More worrying still, it means that very specific assurances about the use of the facilities at Diego Garcia have also turned out, although given in good faith, to have been false."

Legal responsibilities

For the Lib Dems, Edward Davey called for a full inquiry and said extraordinary rendition was "state-sponsored abduction" and the government must ensure that Britain was not used to "facilitate" it.

Former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell added: "The truth is, this is a gross embarrassment, in spite of its good faith, for the British government, involving as it does a breach of our moral obligations and possibly our legal responsibilities as well."

Labour MP Mike Gapes, chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, told MPs the US administration "has clearly misled or lied to our government, [which] has resulted in our government misleading... members of this House."

But Mr Miliband told the BBC later: "I do not believe the US government set out to mislead the British government. I believe they told us in good faith they had no evidence of the use of Diego Garcia."

CIA 'errors'

He said British principles were "absolutely clear" - that it would not support the use of rendition for torture and always required permission for the use of British bases.

"I have it from the mouth of the Secretary of State of the US that that is understood at the highest levels of in the American government," he added.

Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen said extraordinary rendition was "a polite way of talking about kidnapping and secret detention".

"It is not enough for the government simply to accept US assurances on correct behaviour in the war on terror - we should retain our own integrity and act accordingly," she said.

In a statement CIA director Mike Hayden said neither of the two men on the flights "was ever part of CIA's high-value terrorist interrogation program" but said they would learn from their "errors".

He added that speculation about a CIA holding facility on Diego Garcia was "false" - as were allegations that detainees were transported to be tortured.

"Torture is against our laws and our values. And, given our mission, CIA could have no interest in a process destined to produce bad intelligence."​

Allegations that the CIA held al-Qaida suspects for interrogation at a secret prison on sovereign British territory are to be investigated by MPs, the Guardian has learned. The all-party foreign affairs committee is to examine long-standing suspicions that the agency has operated one of its so-called "black site" prisons on Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean that is home to a large US military base.
Lawyers from Reprieve, a legal charity that represents a number of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, including several former British residents, are calling on the committee to question US and British officials about the allegations. According to the organisation's submission to the committee, the UK government is "potentially systematically complicit in the most serious crimes against humanity of disappearance, torture and prolonged incommunicado detention".

Clive Stafford Smith, the charity's legal director, said he was "absolutely and categorically certain" that prisoners have been held on the island. "If the foreign affairs committee approaches this thoroughly, they will get to the bottom of it," he said.

Andrew Tyrie, Tory MP for Chichester and a campaigner against the CIA's use of detention without trial, has also urged the committee to investigate. He said: "Time and time again the UK government has relied on US assurances on this issue, refusing to examine the truth of these allegations for themselves. It is high time our government took its head out of the sand and looked into these allegations."

Same response

A member of the foreign affairs committee said the committee would pursue the allegations as part of its inquiry into Britain's overseas territories. Although Diego Garcia is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, it is unclear whether the British government knows whether the CIA has detained prisoners there or not.

UK officials are known to have questioned their American counterparts about the allegation several times over a period of more than three years, most recently last month. Whenever MPs have attempted to press ministers in the Commons, they have met with the same response: that the US authorities "have repeatedly given us assurances" that no terrorism suspects have been held there.

The existence of the CIA's black site prisons was acknowledged by President George Bush in September last year. He said al-Qaida suspects or members of the Taliban who "withhold information that could save American lives" have been taken "to an environment where they can be held secretly, questioned by experts".

Mr Bush did not disclose the location of any prison, but suspicion that one may have been located on Diego Garcia, some 1,000 miles off Sri Lanka's southern coast, has been building for years. The 2,000 islanders were expelled in the early 1970s after the British government struck a secret deal to lease the 37-mile long island to the US for use as an air and naval base. Any evidence uncovered by the foreign affairs committee pointing to the existence of a secret CIA prison on the island would be hugely embarrassing for ministers.

Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star US general who is professor of international security studies at the West Point military academy, has twice spoken publicly about the use of Diego Garcia to detain suspects. In May 2004 he said: "We're probably holding around 3,000 people, you know, Bagram air field, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq." In December last year he repeated the claim: "They're behind bars...we've got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram air field, in Guantánamo."

MPs on the committee may inquire into a Gulfstream executive jet which has been linked by its registration number to several CIA prisoner operations - known as extraordinary renditions - and which flew from Washington to Diego Garcia, via Athens, on September 11 2002, soon after the capture of Ramzi Binalshibh, a suspected planner of the September 11 attacks the previous year.

A prison of some sort is known to exist on Diego Garcia: in 1984, a review by the US government's general accounting office of construction work on the island reported that a "detention facility" had been completed the previous December. British ministers have also disclosed that a building on the island was redesignated as a prison after the September 11 attacks.

'Confirmation'

Last June Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who investigated the CIA's use of European territory and air space during prisoner operations, concluded in a report to the Council of Europe that prisoners had been held on the island.

Mr Marty, who later told the European parliament that he had received help from senior CIA officers, reported: "We have received concurring confirmations that United States agencies have used Diego Garcia, which is the international legal responsibility of the UK, in the 'processing' of high-value detainees."

One possibility which the foreign affairs committee may explore is that suspects have been held on a prison ship off the coast of Diego Garcia. The UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, has said that he has heard from reliable sources that the US has held prisoners on ships in the Indian Ocean. There have also been second-hand accounts from detainees at Guantánamo of prisoners being held on US naval vessels.

One detainee told a researcher from Reprieve: "One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship; they were all closed off in the bottom. The people detained on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo."​

It's an interesting question. Why didn't you lot raise a stink about this? But then, what would you or could you have done? Arrested the CIA agents running the flights? I admit, I would've loved to have seen George's face on the tv explaining why our people were being arrested for kidnapping and torture. And why it wasn't his fault, of course.

I was surprised when I heard about this earlier today on some news show, but then I realized I really wasn't and was just more surprised someone mentioned it in MSM (never to be mentioned again because, as we can see from the lack of replies here, no one is surprised anymore).

MacRumors attracts a broad audience
of both consumers and professionals interested in
the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on
purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms.